Day 53 - Feed My Starving Children

Monday night we have Family Home Evening. We usually have a short lesson about a scripture story or gospel principle, followed by an activity. We get an opportunity to teach our children of Gods love and get to spend time as a family. Tonight, we excluded the younger ones to volunteer at Feed My Starving Children.

Feed My Starving Children is a great organization that sends food to hungry children in poor countries. They operate through donations and volunteers. 90% of donations are used to buy supplies for Manna Rice Packs; a combination of vitamins, vegetables, soy, and rice. Each box of assembled packs feeds a child for 7 months. Volunteers are young as 5-years-old can help assemble these packs by scooping ingredients into bags. Older volunteers can help weigh, seal, and box the packs. If you are allergic to soy or need to sit, you can help label. There is a job for everyone. We are lucky enough to have a permanent packing facility near our home, but there are mobile packing sites as well. Check their website for more information.

Service Opportunities for Kids

It is hard to find places that let kids volunteer, but there are some opportunities out there. Here are some resources and ideas:

• Feed My Starving Children-kids as young as 5 can volunteer (with an adult)
• JustServe.org-Service opportunities in your community. You can search by age range.
• Volunteermatch.org - You can search by age range AND interests
• Make-a-Wish - our school has a donation drive for them every year and through that, we found out about a service opportunity to help fulfill a wish by building a playground. The kids weren't too helpful, but they could carry pieces and hold things for people. If you email or call, I'm sure they could find a wish your family could help fulfill for a child in your community.
• Drives and Donations-this is the easiest for kids but I feel like this is what they always get stuck with. Have them raise money through a bake sale or lemonade stand to donate to a cause (we do a door-to-door bake sale in our neighborhood for Make-A-Wish) or go door-to-door (with parents of course) collecting food or goods to donate.
• Visit a retirement home-my kids are kind of shy, so we don't do this, but I should. Old people love to see children and have someone to talk to.
• Random Acts of Kindness - make a list (or find one online) and start crossing them off. Do at least one a day.
• Pick up trash-go to a park, a parking lot,  the beach. There is trash everywhere.
• Make Fleece blankets and scarves to donate-fleece scarves and blankets are super easy and always in need.

Day 10 - Heart Attacking

We are super lucky to have great extended family living close by. The only problem is, our schedules have been off for a while now. We haven't been able to hang out with them for a bit so we wanted to let them know we still love them and miss seeing them. So today, we decided to give them a heart attack.

Heart attacking someone is the best because it combines showing someone they are loved with the fun equivalent to toilet papering someone's house. You get to be sneaky and sort of a vandal, but you know whoever your victim is will love it.

How to give someone you love a heart attack

The simplest way is just cut out a bunch of hearts and use them to decorate someone's yard. Throw them across the lawn and stick them around with tape. We like to get a little more creative, though.

• Use chalk. Decorate the driveway and sidewalk with drawn hearts and sweet messages.
• Decorate with streamers. It's almost toilet papering, except it's decorating so it's cute. 
• Use plastic forks. This is the coolest trick. Stick plastic forks in the lawn, prong side up. Then you can use the prongs to hold things up; decorated paper plates, cut out hearts, nice notes, balloons, etc.
• Use pictures. You can cut out pictures of things your "victim" likes out of magazines (in heart shapes of course). Today, we printed pictures of the kids cousins in black and white, then colored them in silly ways.
  
• Write nice messages. Today we wrote something we liked about each member on the family on the back of their pictures.
• Leave a treat. Make cookies or brownies and leave them on the doorstep. Sweets are the best way to show love, right?

Day 3 - Cookies and Cards

In our religion, we try to keep the Sabbath Day holy. That means something a little different for every family. For us, it means less active activities and a break from video games and television (except for the occasional Veggie Tales). We try to do things that bring us closer as a family or bring us closer to our Savior. One of our activities today was making chocolate chips cookies together.  We then made cards together for people we thought might want one and delivered them with the cookies. We talked about how we were showing love for others like Jesus did.

Sunday Activity Ideas

We sometime struggle with Sabbath Day activities. Like everything else, it helps to plan ahead. Here is my list of simple Sunday family activities:

• Write letters to friends and family
• Read stories together and write our own stories to share with each other
• Play board games
• Print pictures and make scrapbooks
• Write in journals about what we did that week
• Visit the temple grounds (or a peaceful garden)
• Watch a video about the life of Christ or other scripture stories
• Go for a nature walk
• Visit a retirement home
• Sing at a hospital 
• Find a service project on justserve.org
• Visit extended family
• Make a meal together to bring to a family in need (maybe a freezer meal)

There is a great list with more ideas here. What are your favorite Sunday activities?